Such cups are very advantageous because they are cheap and effective and may readily be formed into nested stacks and thus require relatively little storage space. They are also biodegradable, in contrast to cups made of plastic material. However, they are not very easy to carry due to the fact that they are flexible and structurally weak and spillages therefore frequently occur. This problem is exacerbated when the beverage to be served is hot because the thermal insulation properties of such cups are relatively poor. Purchasers therefore frequently burn their fingers when carrying such cups filed with a hot beverage and this is not only uncomfortable but also increases the problem of spillages occurring.
In order to obviate these problems, it is known to use a holder or tray of folded cardboard material, which defines a number of recesses for accommodating cups. This largely obviates the problem of burning one's fingers when the cups are filled with a hot beverage but the trays have to be manually folded from flat cardboards blanks and this is quite time-consuming. Furthermore, the tray blanks have to be stored and many retail outlets simply do not have the storage space available for such relatively bulky articles. Finally, the trays are generally disposed of after being used only once and this means that they add not inconsiderably to the overhead expenses of the retail outlet in question and also represent an additional unacceptable environmental burden in that they must all be subsequently disposed of in a land fill or alternatively recycled.
Many of the above problems are solved by the cup holder disclosed in WO2011/007119. This cup holder includes a collar and a handle. The collar is a continuous loop of flexible material in which two opposed holes are formed and which extends around and engages the outer surface of a cup. The handle consists of an elongate strip of flexible sheet material, integral with each end of which are two divergent elongate lugs. The maximum distance between the outer edges of the lugs is greater than the maximum dimension of the holes in the direction of the length of the collar and the width of each lug is less than the said maximum dimension. When the cup holder is assembled, one lug at each end of the handle is folded over on top of the other and the two lugs are then threaded through a respective one of the holes in the collar. The folded lug is then unfolded and the end of the handle is then pivotally attached to the collar with the two lugs on one side of the collar and the adjacent portion of the handle on the other side.
Whilst very effective in many applications it is found that the known cup holder does have some disadvantages and, in particular, that the handle may suddenly become detached from the collar, with the result that the cup falls to the floor. Quite apart from potential damage to the floor or floor covering, if the cup contains scalding liquid this could clearly be associated with injury to the user and is therefore highly undesirable. The risk of such failure occurring is increased when the cup and its contents are heavy and it is thought that the pressure exerted by the edges of the holes in the collar on the side edges of the lugs can act to cause the lugs to fold sufficiently to enable them to slip out of the associated hole. This problem could be overcome by making the handle thicker and thus more rigid by using thicker card or board but this makes the initial assembly of the handle more difficult and it also results in the handle becoming heavier and thus more expensive and this is not acceptable for a component that is very cheap and in most cases used only once. The problem referred to above is thought to be even more severe if the handle is made of plastic sheet material, such as polypropylene, and this is thought to be due to the softening of the material that occurs if the contents of the cup are very hot.